Friday, 17 February 2017

WASTEMAN OF THE WEEK: 065

WASTEMAN OF THE WEEK - SKY TV

So I moved house about 2 months ago and signed up to a Sky TV deal. It was pretty cheap as I'm a new customer. I was buzzing. Fast forward a couple months and I'm at my wits end already. We got Sky at home when I moved out so I've never really spent much time using it and becoming familiar with the interface. Last night I had a meltdown, I cannot believe how shit it is.

From the way episodes and shows are indexed, to the way the interface works to how clunky and unresponsive the software is, is this really the premier way to watch cable television in this country? It's an astounding mess. For those who don't know, when you click to view the information on a show it doesn't show you the season or episode number. I got halfway through an episode of Idris Elba: Fighter last night before realising the first one on the list was the 3rd episode in the series. How can that be possible? It's dinosaur shit, the way you consume media and entertainment has gone way way past that and it's like because Sky have a monopoly over things like sports broadcasting rights they don't really need to push the envelope with their product.

I don't know if it's because I'm so used to how wonderfully simple the interfaces are on things like Netflix and iPlayer that I expected more from Sky. At more than 10 times the cost of Netflix you'd think they'd bother to sort out the fucking archaic mess. I'm well aware that from a software point of view it's way more complicated than something like Netflix, but there's no excuse for not properly indexing episodes. They're supposed to be the TV guys. They're supposed to care about TV. It's disgusting that they've got you over a barrel and will continue to just raise prices once they know you're hooked. I cannot believe they have the cheek to charge as much as they do and this is what they provide. Even when you've series linked a show the episodes are not in any particular order. They'll run from 1-22 then from 34-40 then from 23-33. It's mental. I'm sure for people who are so used to Sky these things seem acceptable and normal but to me, as a new customer, someone who is tech and entertainment savvy it's a mental mental weird joke.